Dr. Xing Wang is a Bioengineering professor, affiliated with the Chemistry Department, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory (HMNTL), and Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received a Ph.D. from New York University, working with Dr. Ned Seeman to build biofunctional DNA motifs. He did his postdoc training at Princeton University with a focus on nucleic acid engineering and RNA biology. At UIUC, Dr. Wang directs the Nucleic Acids Programming Lab (NAPL), and his research group utilizes nucleic acid and protein engineering to evolve new molecular ligands for targeted drug delivery and create designer DNA nanostructure-based “plug-and-play” platforms for the applications in disease diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Wang is a recipient of Mikashi Award in 2021. He was selected as a Fellow of Y Combinator Founder Cohort in 2021. He received a Spoke Award in 2024. Dr. Wang’s research group is mainly supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF).
Olivier Soppera is Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and leads the PHOTON research group at the Institut de Science des Matériaux de Mulhouse (IS2M, France). He graduated in Chemistry at ENS Cachan and obtained his PhD from the University of Haute-Alsace in 2003, working on photopolymerization processes in hybrid. materials. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Portugal, he joined CNRS in 2004, where he progressively developed a research program at the interface of photochemistry, nanofabrication, and materials science.
Over the past two decades, his work has focused on the use of light as a versatile tool for materials design and structuring, with a strong emphasis on sol–gel chemistry, hybrid materials, and laser-assisted processing. He has pioneered photoinduced strategies for the fabrication of nanostructured films, functional coatings, and responsive surfaces with tunable optical and chemical properties.
His current projects span several research directions, including laser-assisted nanofabrication, development of hybrid organic–inorganic materials, and the integration of metallic nanoparticles to exploit plasmonic effects . These approaches open new perspectives for advanced optical sensors, environmental monitoring devices, and biomedical applications.
Olivier Soppera has coordinated and participated in numerous national and European research projects and has established long-term collaborations with both academic institutions and industrial partners. He is the author of more than 180 peer-reviewed publications and several patents. In addition to his scientific activities, he has been actively involved in fostering international collaborations, in particular with Taiwan and contributing to the scientific networks in France on Photochemistry (SP2P at SCF) and Nanosciences (C’Nano).
Talk Title: Molecularly Imprinted Polymers Meets Plasmonics: Light-Assisted Routes to Smart Sensors